But every woman that prayeth... From the hypothetical case of the man praying or preaching with covered head (which was mentioned first for the sake of introducing the antithesis), the Apostle comes now to the actual case of which he has to treat, viz., the woman uncovering her head. At first sight the permission here implied for a woman to pray and teach in public may seem at variance with the teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:34, where she is commanded to observe silence, and the injunction in 1 Timothy 2:12, that women should not “teach.” In these passages, however, it is the public meeting of the whole Church that is spoken of, and in such the women were to be silent — but the meetings spoken of here, though public as distinguished from the private devotions of individuals, were probably only smaller gatherings such as are indicated in Romans 14:5; Colossians 4:5; Philemon 1:2. It has been suggested by some writers that the command in 1 Corinthians 14:34, does forbid the practice which is here assumed to be allowable only for the sake of argument; but surely St. Paul would not have occupied himself and his readers here with the elaborate, and merely forensic discussion of the conditions under which certain functions were to be performed which he was about subsequently to condemn, as not allowable under any restriction whatever?
Dishonoureth her head. — Both among Jews and Greeks the long tresses of a woman were her glory. Only in times of mourning (Deuteronomy 21:12), or when convicted of shameful sin, was a woman to have her hair cut short.
Here, again, the word “head” must be taken in its double significance. A woman with uncovered head dishonours that head itself by making it thus in the sight of others the type of a shame which is really not hers, and as her head typically is her husband, so she dishonours him also.